


Sangue

by TheodoreR (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, this ship doesn't know what a happy ending is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 22:07:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20454305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheodoreR
Summary: Some people need to say stuff likeBenji saved my life oncewith a wet smile and somehow they make everything seem less awful. But Sirius doesn’t want to talk about it and even if he wanted, he wouldn’t have anything to say.Benji never saved his life and Sirius sure as hell didn’t save his.He can’t remember when was the last time he saw him before he was just blood on his hands and there’s no way of making it less awful.It’s just that they threw themselves in something too big, simply, and one after the other Benji will be all of them.It’s just that Sirius is not blood on anyone’s hands yet, he still has air in his lungs and he really, with every bit of himself, wants to stop thinking. And when Sirius stops thinking, what is left is James.





	Sangue

**Author's Note:**

> Another one, yes, I will orphan this one too later but what can I say.  
[(EFP)](https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=2442556&i=1)

When the bell starts ringing, Sirius is still in the shower.

He barely hears the muffled sound of it beyond the pouring warm water. He keeps harshly rubbing the irritated skin of his hands and forearms for a few more seconds before realising that the noise requires some kind of reaction from him: getting out of the shower for example. Sirius stares at his hands dripping foam and water, gripping tightly the dog shaped sponge that Remus gave him for Christmas. _For his stray dog bristly fur,_ or something like that.

Every trace of blood vanished hours ago, but Sirius sees it only now.

The breaks between the bell ringing are less long now and when Sirius finally stops the water and starts dripping on the bathroom floor they’re completely gone, disappeared in one protracted sharp noise. Sirius is vaguely aware of how the noise would normally provoke in him an annoyed reaction, but now he only crosses without any hurry his messy apartment towards the entrance door, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him.

Sirius knows he’s not in shook.

He’s calmer than ever actually and he’s also perfectly lucid, totally able of focusing on what he’s supposed to do. He knows he needs to do groceries for example, because his fridge is empty and Sirius Black never skipped a meal in his life, not even when he still was Grimmauld Place black sheep and his mother sent him to his room without dinner more often than not, forcing him to dangerous expeditions in the kitchen in the middle of the night. He’s perfectly calm, Sirius, it’s just that he stops smelling the scent of blood only when he sees James.

“Do you always open like _that_ to people?”

Crossed arms, a brow raised and his hazelnut eyes fixed on Sirius’ nudity, where someone less shameless –as Remus always calls him- would have put at least a towel.

“Only to important guests” Sirius replies with a little ironic smirk and he’s surprised by how his lips cooperate. He can still smile, he mentally registers. Actually, what Sirius really can’t do is _stop._

“You’re lucky I’m not Hopkins” James sneers walking past him while Sirius closes the door. “She would have taken you directing on the doorframe.”

They were still at Hogwarts when it happened, but Sirius understands that a girl that makes you a love declaration in front of everyone, with an actual cheesy poetry written by her, is something your best friend will be able to use against you forever; he knows it because if it happened to James, he too would still be mocking him about it. As he goes to his room to throw some clothes on, Sirius is also vaguely aware of how opening the door completely naked and without even making sure that there wasn’t a Death Eater on the other side wasn’t the best example of lucidity. It’s just that he knew it, in the irrational and infallible way of always, that it was James. It’s always James when Sirius wants to scream until his throat burns. 

_It’s always James and that’s it,_ a voice somewhere in his head whispers and Sirius doesn’t feel like contradicting it.

When he walks back to the living room, James’s coat is thrown carelessly on his couch and busy noises come from the kitchen.

“Did you went to brush your hair?” James asks absently, messing with the coffeepot. Sirius remembers the taste of the last coffee he let his friend prepare and he’s not sure he wants to repeat the experience. He’s not even sure how a person can be unable to make a coffee that tastes, at least, like coffee, but he also knows that James won’t give up the coffeepot for anything in the world, because it doesn’t exist that James Potter can’t do something. Sirius is pretty sure his coffee will taste terrible like always, but he lets him be: there’s something reassuring in the way James keeps pressing with conviction the brown powder in the filter, spilling half of it on the marble counter.

“Brush my hair?” Sirius leans on the doorframe, a crooked smirk on his lips. “I’m surprised _you_ know this word. Where did you hear it?”  
“Jokes on my hair, really?” James sighs in defeat and automatically brings a hand on his head, dusting a lock of hair with coffee. “You’re not tired yet, after eight years?”

“If since we met you brushed it at least once, maybe...”

James closes the topic with a grimace, but his eyes linger on the golden phoenix on Sirius’s messy t-shirt a second too much. He has one just like that, at home. They bought them together the same day they became a part of the Order: it had seemed appropriate and terribly exciting at the time, just like every single idea when it’s the two of them. Mad Eye didn’t appreciate the irony of it: Sirius still hears the echo of his screams, _Constant vigilance!,_ just behind his left ear. And Remus’ eloquent eyes, always so good in saying _I told you _ without even talking.

They were wearing those t-shirts when they had their first fight with the Death Eaters as members of the Order.

No casualties, no wounded, just the adrenaline and James’s left arm tight around his waist while with the other he casted spell after spell and Sirius had both hands gripped on his motorcycle wheel. The chasing, the colourful sparks of the spells lighting the night and James’s electrified voice in his ears, the police car upside down and one _Oblivion _that there was no time to pronounce. Moody had something to say that time too, because two muggle Aurors –_police _or something like that_\- _swore they saw them climbing on a motorcycle muttering nonsense –_Elvendork! It’s unisex!_\- and take off flying. But Moody’s scolding wasn’t that different from McGonagall’s when they did some mischief at school and that time, _oh that time was perfect. _

Everything was exactly like they had imagined it back in Hogwarts.

The adrenaline, the sense of danger, the spells yelled at the top of their lungs. And the wild exaltation when they hit the target. As if war was just another nocturnal expedition into the Slytherin Common Room.

It’s just that Sirius didn’t take into account the smell of burning flesh entering your nose and straight to your brain.

It’s that smell that Sirius can’t get out of his head now, not even after six hours.

James is burning the coffee, because even as he blathers of God knows what his eyes regularly come back to Sirius, and he can only think about how Benji Fenwick’s carbonized fleshed smelt and wondering if he was still alive when they did it. Maybe they separated his fingers from his hands _before_ burning it. Sirius doesn’t know what it’s best because the room was large but Benji, that yet was skinnier than Remus, covered it all. Sirius wonders how long it lasted and after how long he stopped screaming. If he still had lips when it was and if it’s possible that it was actually the heart the lumpy heap crushed on the floor. He doesn’t know why such an idea crossed his mind, when the amount of blood made everything unrecognizable, but he _did _think it, that that was the heart and someone must have thrown it there and suddenly that whole war thing had seemed too big.

“Here.” James is in front of him and he’s handing him a cup full of a dark smoking liquid that with some luck could look like coffee. “It’s good.”

Sirius carefully grabs the cup with both hands and follows James on the couch in the other room.

It’s not good, of course. It burns his throat and it has the same awful taste as always.

James keeps talking and Sirius doesn’t hear him.

Bellatrix was covered in blood, as if she smeared it on herself, _and she probably had._ She was laughing, her head thrown back and her mouth wide open, a crazy vampire. Sirius could hear her laughing even now if only James stopped talking.

When he ended up on the ground his blood had mixed with Benji’s on his forearms, there where he rubbed for hours in the shower. In the middle of the battle, sitting on the floor, Sirius had watched his hands and he had been close to burst out laughing like Bellatrix, _louder_ than Bellatrix.

“It sucks, James.” He points out, tightening his fingers around the cup before taking another sip.  
“I know,” James leaves his own cup on the small table in front of the couch. A drop of coffee slips along the white ceramic and quickly soaks the grey page of a creased quotidian, erasing the name of the umpteenth missing muggleborn. “It won’t always be like this.”

Sirius would like to laugh or snort, or both, but he can never do anything when James looks at him like that. Not that it’s a bad thing for Sirius to just still once in a while. Sometimes he feels like he never stopped since the Hat sorted him in the wrong house, a long weary ride that only pauses when James looks at him, just a few second to catch his breath.

“Maybe it’s your coffee machine,” James runs his hand through his hair and it’s already the fourth time in a few minutes. “I think it’s broken.”

“Because you keep trying to set it on fire.” Sirius points out before leaving his cup too.

Remus and Peter must be somewhere and they’re probably talking about it – Sirius is happy they’re not there. He wouldn’t stand the red shroud around Peter’s blue iris nor Remus’s pained voice. Those are more appropriate reactions than his, he’s perfectly aware of it, it makes more sense than sitting there talking about coffee and pretending one of them hasn’t been dissected into pieces that same afternoon, but Sirius wouldn’t bear anything different than James’s forcedly gleeful voice and his eyes glued on him.

Some people need to say stuff like _“Benji saved my life once”_ with a wet smile and somehow they make everything seem less awful. But Sirius doesn’t want to talk about it and even if he wanted, he wouldn’t have anything to say.

Benji never saved his life and Sirius sure as hell didn’t save his.

He can’t remember when was the last time he saw him before he was just blood on his hands and there’s no way of making it less awful.

It’s just that they threw themselves in something too _big_, simply, and one after the other Benji will be all of them.

It’s just that Sirius is not blood on anyone’s hands yet, he still has air in his lungs and he really, with every bit of himself, wants to stop thinking. And when Sirius stops thinking, what is left is James.

And Sirius simply can’t anymore: he tightens his hand in James’ hair and he pulls him hard, too hard, pressing desperate lips against his. It’s more like two animals crashing against each other rather than a kiss and Sirius is pretty sure he hurt James, because he also hurt himself, but it’s not like he can stop now. He doesn’t open his eyes and he doesn’t wait for James to have some kind of reaction, he shoves his tongue between his lips because it’s all what he wants to do in that moment –it’s probably everything that he will ever want to do. It’s not like surprising a girl, it’s nothing like that one time he was drunk as shit and so mad at the word that he kissed the girl his best friend was in love with. It’s not Lily Evans, who bit his tongue until it bled to remind him that she only drank some pumpkin juice and wasn’t even thinking about responding to his kiss. It’s James and Sirius’s head bangs against the backrest of the couch after he shoved him hard with both hands. When he drags himself up, shoring his elbows on the pillows, James literally ran away, without even slamming the door theatrically after himself and Sirius starts laughing.

But now he smells blood again and it’s his, dripping from the lip James squeezed between his teeth.

It smells just like Benji’s blood did and just like they all will in the end.

Sirius doesn’t hear the footsteps, just like he hadn’t heard the bell ringing for the first twenty minutes, but he’s still laughing when his head slams again against the backrest and a body crushes his and he finds out that James is not that much better than him at kissing him without risking their teeth. Not that Sirius cares about anything other than James’s tongue making his way into his mouth right now. Once again Sirius’s fingers grip his hair, pulling him even more against him, hungry just like Moony in his worst full moon nights. There’s something desperate in the way Sirius presses his numb lips against James’s and in the way James’s hands grip his wrists, as if he was about to slip from him at any moment.

Sirius wonders if this is the taste of every kiss in the middle of a war or if it’s just the memory of her red hair that makes it like that.

It’s hard to find James’s taste between the metallic one of blood and the bitter flavour of coffee. It doesn’t even taste like _real_ coffee, to be honest, but when he’ll think about him –_and he will think about him every second of every hour for fourteen years-_ for Sirius it will always be the aftertaste of terrible coffee and blood that it’s James’s mouth in that moment. It’s a kiss between two cornered animals and Sirius doesn’t know if it’s what he wants, but it’s all there is and ever will be. It’s that James is not blood on anyone’s hands yet, he’s there and he’s heavy breathing and salty skin, he’s the taste of coffee on his lips and the feeling of his hair under Sirius’ fingertips. He’s the stiff fabric of his jeans scraping his wrist as he slips a hand under his belt, before even loosening it. 

He wonders if James hears them too, the deafening dongs blending with their moans.

There was never time, Sirius knows it. It’s the first time, but it’s not the start of anything.

It’s just that thing between them that fights frenetically because, war or not, it’s already lost.

Sirius looks for it, in the end, in James’s eyes, but he doesn’t find it. He knows it’s there somewhere between their breaths, but there’s no way to make it real.

So he licks and bites, but a slight movement of his wound will be enough to erase the red mark on James’s neck and the thought makes him crazy and he feels just like a dog that pointlessly growls and barks towards who steals his owner’s attention.

He feels it on James’s fingers, the smooth gold cold against his skin, so different from the heat of their flesh. It’s a promise he made to her and he didn’t take it off, not to make it easy or because he completely forgot, Sirius doesn’t know.

The fact is that _it’s James_ and he was his since the moment they met and this is the only thing Sirius ever believed in. 

It _has _to be and, in spite of that ring, James Potter is still the only thing Sirius has to lose.

And he clings to him, scratching, because the Blacks taught him years before that eventually you lose just everything.

*

Sirius can still feel his breath on his lips when James breaks the silence.

“Don’t say it” He warns softly, because he always knows when Sirius is about to fuck things up. “Don’t say it.”

And it hurts a bit, but Sirius doesn’t say it, because he loves him.

He watches him walk out of the door and he doesn’t say it.

He watches him keep his promise and marry Lily Evans.

He watches him become a father and he still doesn’t say it.

*

Fourteen years later James is just a laugh on his lips and that _I love you _Sirius still has it stuck in his throat, burning and true like the first day.


End file.
